Project and Program Management

As a certified project manager and portfolio manager, I am often asked, what is the difference between project, program and portfolio management? The way I explained it is to use the metaphor of a musical concert series, and it goes like this.

If you are a fan of opera, orchestra music or love a Jazz series program, then this analogy should make sense. When I think of projects, programs and portfolios I think of them in terms of musical concerts. The entire season of musical concerts would be the portfolio, each event or concert in the season would be the programand each song within a concert or program would be a project. So, you would equate a portfolio to a concert series, you would think of the concert event with multiple songs as a program and each song as a project.